Every election is a storytelling contest, with campaigning parties competing to frame the plot. This year’s local elections, the largest test of voters’ mood since the 2024 general election, have been dominated by two master-narratives.
The first is about the demise of the old two-party system under which Labour and Conservatives have been the battling giants for almost 100 years. Vast regions of England have long been regarded as safe electoral zones. They have been disrupted only occasionally by strategic incursions by the Liberal Democrats or mid-term revolts against whoever formed the Westminster government.
The story of the 2026 local elections is one of a conspicuous public impulse to punish the old incumbents, resulting in the ascendancy of the new kids on the political block – Reform UK and the Greens.
In the 2024 general election, Reform won 15.3% of the vote in English constituencies and the Green Party won 7.3%. Since then, Labour’s poll ratings have fallen and the Tories have hardly recovered from their devastating result when they lost 238 seats.
But the story amounts to more than numbers. We are witnessing a pervasive and powerful expression of desire by the electorate – not just for radical political alternatives, but for a radical alternative to politics itself.
The rise of the outsider
This is a story about the rejection of anyone who looks or speaks like a conventional politician. Both Reform leader Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens in England and Wales, have cultivated images of themselves as outsiders who eschew the caution and attachment to well-rehearsed cliche that has so discredited their opponents.
It was an election in which voters came to believe that what these political mavericks say is what they actually mean. Left-inclined voters might feel repelled by Farage’s strident nationalism and right-inclined voters might regard Polanski as a dangerous dreamer. But neither doubts that they are up against genuine commitments.
Meanwhile, Labour and Conservative candidates have continued to campaign in the way they have been for decades. This means they have often actually been talking about local policies relating to refuse collection, libraries and care services. The newcomers have tended to ignore the rules of the game and fought their campaigns on headline values rather than policy detail.
Reform UK has said that it planned to open migrant detention centres in areas where the vote for the Green Party is high, while Green candidates in Haringey produced an election video stating that if elected they would uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
The fact that elected local councillors lack any power to place detention centres in other areas or determine UK foreign policy was ignored. Local elections were turned into a showcase for a style of politics in which cultural symbolism outweighed the prudential technicalities of local governance.
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After a year of Reform UK in local government, the cracks are starting to show
However, as Reform politicians are learning in the few areas where they already hold local power, attention to policy complexity calls for rather more than the repetition of populist slogans, leading several of their councillors to leave the party as the responsibility of hard policy choices has dawned upon them.
For many voters, these local elections present a chance to gamble on the promise of the untried. And this brings us to the second story of this campaign, which is taking place almost exactly a decade after the Brexit referendum.
That was a moment when the politics of “anything must be better than this” appealed to electoral gamblers. As an insurgency of the unheard, Brexit reflected a feeling that the political establishment needed a good poke in the eye. This was regardless of the consequences for the assailants.
Ms Jane Campbell/Shutterstock
A key story of this year’s local elections is that the division between Leavers and Remainers, far from fading into the distance, has hardened over the past decade. Socially liberal Remainers and culturally conservative Leavers have each sought political homes in which to complete what they see as unfinished business.
YouGov polling in early 2026 suggested that how people voted on Brexit is a key predictor of how they would vote in this year’s elections. Some 50% of those who voted Leave in 2016 intended to back Reform this year. Among Remainers, the largest number (28%) say that they will vote Labour, but both the Greens and the Liberal Democrats each have around a fifth of the Remainer vote, making them the largest political home for those who opposed Brexit ten years ago.
The results of these elections say a lot about how much voters are tired of the old incumbents and continue to dwell on changes that Brexit promised or threatened. In terms of how councils will be run between now and the next local elections, during a period of constrained public spending, hollowing out of services and energy insecurity, this election campaign has had precious little to say.